Sometimes leadership took an iron will, and sometimes it took the patience and finesse of a kindergarten teacher. The trick was knowing when to use which tactic.
After a moment, Kingsley nodded but didn’t comment. Austin nodded as well—a truce. The floor was mine.
“Tristan,” I said, “why don’t you go over, in all the detail you have, what that mage shared with you? That’ll help us all get on the same page. Then, Sebastian, I’d like to hear all you know from your spy network about what Momar might have in store for us. I’d also like to remind everyone here today that Sebastian and Nessa will be tortured and killed if they are caught by the enemy. They usually battle people like Momar from the shadows. Most people battle him that way, and we know why based on what’s happened to other packs. Stick your neck out, meet the axe. That’s how it works. So before we go discounting our mages because they happen to have the same magic as the enemy, let’s instead use their knowledge to help us all stay alive, okay? Let’s not lose any more men or women.”
Tristan started by recounting the situation in which the mage had died and then waited to see if there were any questions. None were asked, so he took the pages of notes back from Austin and recounted what was there, stopping a couple of times to add things he’d remembered that didn’t make it onto paper. After finishing, he returned the notes to Austin and lifted his eyebrows, silently asking for questions.
Kingsley was looking at the projector, though, the slide with the dates of the attacks. Someone else was filling in the time stamps provided by Tristan, some exact and some guesses.
The whole time Nessa stared at Tristan thoughtfully, suspiciously, and for the first time I found myself tilting my head at the situation as well. Those were some very detailed notes. I hadn’t gotten anything half so detailed when I used the nightmare spell. It was like Tristan had cracked the guy’s skull open and looked inside.
Then again, Tristan’s subject had already been muttering about things, asking for some sort of deal to get out of his predicament, and that was before the bit with Edgar and Mr. Tom. It made sense that things might go a bit more smoothly without all the mayhem.
I pushed away the niggling feeling that something was amiss to focus on the situation at hand. I would ask Austin for his thoughts later.
Kingsley swore, his whole countenance brimming with anger. He turned to look out the window.
“I’d thought they were testing our defenses in the beginning,” he said. “For a while they changed it up enough that it seemed like they were feeling us out. But when the instances stopped evolving, and didn’t escalate…”
Austin nodded slowly. “They surely were testing you in the beginning. And then, once they had the lay of the land, they used those instances as distractions.”
There was a tone to his voice that hinted at you should’ve known that.
Before Kingsley could react, Sebastian stepped forward, the normal guy dealing with shifters and not the powerful mage with his shiny watch. “Do you know what else you did? You took away their sense of urgency. Austin…Steele. Austin? I’m confused about what I’m supposed to be calling him, but that guy”—he pointed at Austin—“said they’d lulled you to sleep. That’s not even remotely true.
Sorry al—Austin. Steele.”
“Use Austin here,” Austin said.
“Thank you. Anyway, Alpha Kingsley, you said you doubled your defenses. You worked long hours. You drove away their distractions and ran around and secured the perimeter, right?”
Kingsley didn’t answer right away, probably not liking the “ran around” part.
“Yes,” he finally said.
“Right. But you didn’t notice their runners. All these many months, you’ve felt secure in chasing them off, and they’ve felt secure in studying how you operate. They’ve snuck around your territory, infiltrated the border towns, listened to your drunk shifters, snuck in and got out again—”
“Is there a point to this?” Kingsley growled.
Sebastian hunched. “Yes. It’s that you’ve changed your entire playbook by bringing us here. They are now operating with a false sense of security. That gives us the upper hand. Jessie, if I may?”
He approached the map and waited for my go-ahead. I nodded.
“Okay. Well.” He pulled a bunch of green and red Monopoly houses and hotels from one pocket, and cards and other little items stolen from board games in the other. He bent to place them in a pile at the edge before pausing and glancing up at Kingsley again. “I have an expansive network in the mage world. Much of that network, at this point, works in some way or form for Momar. He owns a lot of real estate, people and places alike, and he’s the most notorious mob boss you’ve ever heard of.